It’s the two-year anniversary of the Lebowski Podcast!  Read this press release, then watch The Big Lebowski and subscribe to the podcast.  You won’t regret it.  =)

Friends Chalupa and Liz have achieved something spectacular here, folks.  They’ve taken their love of film and talking about film and done something truly amazing.  They’ve gone from chatting with schoolmates in a small living room to recording an “internationally-known” internet broadcast reaching thousands.

This podcast is intelligent and entertaining.  While it’s, at it’s very simplest, a group of people talking about a movie, it’s also an interesting, well-planned, and thought-provoking series of discussions and interviews covering many topics: feminism, religion, philosophy, film, current events… The list goes on.

So, here’s a shout-out to Ben and Liz – well done, kids.  Keep it coming!

Signed,
A Fan Since the First Episode

I work with proprietary software that doesn’t resize using external apps. This tool, however, gives you dimensions as you resize – so you can just drag the corner to the right size! So simple, but SO useful.

http://www.brianapps.net/sizer.html

This is… hilarious.

• To “bogart” is to hog or take more than your share.  (Read this.)
• The plural of “metropolis” is “metropolises” or “metropoleis.”

So, today’s post was something on faking a lomo look using Photoshop. I don’t have Photoshop (Paint Shop Pro is a heckuva lot cheaper), so I spent some time tonight trying to replicate the settings the post suggested. I kinda like a toned-down version of the effect – it can make pictures pop. (It can also make pictures look ridiculous if you’re not careful.)

What hooked me was a commercial promo before the show even started. They showed a kid (with no audio – someone was doing a voiceover) doing a dance I immediately recognized, even without sound. This kid did some moves from a Bollywood film called Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai – a movie I watched in college. I know the moves because I had a roomie who frequently practiced them.

So I waited anxiously to see this.

(The movie version is here.)

Dave, uploaded by tara.aukerman.

Carrie seems to be doing well – just a little stressed.  And no wonder!  As soon as she got back into the car and checked her messages (she wisely left the phone in the car during the pedicure), she got a frantic call that started with “Oh my God.  Something’s horribly wrong” (or something equally alarming – I can’t remember exactly anymore)…  Turns out, someone had ordered blue shirts for something and received lime green shirts instead – but it wasn’t even an emergency.  C’mon, guys – rule number two (after “Happy wife, happy life”) is “NEVER alarm a bride!”  Sheesh.

I’m taking a quick break from work to post – I’ve been hanging at the local Panera (free wireless internet) and working remotely today while David runs with the rest of them trying to get the various wedding places decorated.

I wanted to post because I wanted to show these pictures:

My office mate.  With a paper umbrella barette.

My boss (a la the FrenchWoman from the End of the Word flash movie).

Me.

Can I just tell you how much I love the people I work with?!  Sedona rocks.  Literally, actually – the guy who hired us, Kerry, is a [fabulous] guitar player/singer who makes rounds at a local restaurant/bar chain called “Cheeseburger in Paradise.”  We had planned, for MONTHS, to show up and surprise him some night while he played – we bought KerryLand t-shirts and everything – and the DAY OF our surprise drop-in (which, by the way, we planned for months), he invited us all out to see him play.  Dinner and drinks on him.

Meredith, Angela (another coworker) and I decided that the least we could do was have blue hair, too (like his logo).  Every one of us wore one of those three wigs by the end of the night.  =)

…

Also, AdoramaPix is having an amazingly great sale on 11×14 prints. Now’s the time.

they’re printers for professional photographers, and a friend recommended them to me when I was printing wedding pictures.

so… I had an issue with them once and sent ‘em an email about it. they fixed the problem right away and asked if I wanted to be part of a group of folk who’d test new site things for them. of course I said, “sure.”

hadn’t heard back from them until today – I get to beta test their new print site! it is SO much better than what’s up now and better than the other digital print sites around. for one, there are multiple ways to do bulk uploads! AND, they’re cross-platform now.

the best part: for going and looking around the beta site, I get a $25 credit! which means, sometime next week, I’ll have wedding photos for the wedding album. =)

I’m excited – I’m a total computer nerd, and I haven’t ever had prolonged access to a Mac. once I get a 256MB chip and 4MB video RAM, I’m good to go. a friend from church, Sarah (the one with her tongue IN her nose – that’s right, folks), bought a skid of iMacs for the church at an IPS auction. half of them work, but only a couple of people even know how to use them, let alone refurb them. so I want to learn.

friend Dave showed me how to access the guts and how to do a firmware update. once I have the RAM, I can install OSX (10.3).

this is practice for me. if I decide that I love using a Mac (although a slow old one), my next computer will be a PowerBook.

* these machines don’t have floppy drives or cd burners – when they first came out, there were no thumb drives. aside from having access to a network, how were users supposed to transfer data?

am very much enjoying this weather… gray and misty/windy/rainy… this goes perfectly with Orff’s Carmina Burana, which I’ve been listening to for the last hour or so. it’s some great stuff. what could follow it? right now, I’m really wishing I had my Little Women the opera cd’s. they’re both 20th century, which means a little less tonal than most folks like, but *I* think they’d complement each other.

grr. I have to keep pressing the pause button to reset the audio buffer – iTunes is a resource hog, and I only have 256MB of RAM in this laptop. the result is a song and a half or so, then the crystal clear audio (through my nice headphones, not through the laptop speakers) turns into a crackly AM-style sound. thankfully, this pausing solution is only temporary. thanks to Mike, I just was able to order double that for $25 – go to NewEgg.com for cheap RAM, kids.

speaking of rain, guess who decided to go grocery shopping last night, right in the middle of the biggest downpour we’ve had in weeks? =) that’s right, the young Aukermans. we thought we had a party to go to tonight, so we were going to go pick up a few things and get the necessities (like milk and toilet paper and mascara). it poured the entire time we were out without letting up.

oops – turns out the party’s on for NEXT Friday, not tonight. still had fun shopping, though. it was like being back in college – do you remember running to the store late at night when no one sane shops and playing the games on the shelves (WalMart has a nuveaux-Atari thing sitting out)? it’s fun shopping with David, even though I normally hate shopping. thanks, D.

burritos tonight… mmm. until then, though, I have to get back to work. adios.

> > PhotoStamps.com < <

this little movie is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while. =) It’s called grocery STORE WARS… it’s worth the download time, I assure you.